


Length Contraction

by Syberina5



Series: The Universality of Quantum Physics Projects [6]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 13:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16873656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syberina5/pseuds/Syberina5
Summary: Word Count: 2,746Disclaimer: What would the name of Sam Beckett’s evil twin be? Bam Seckett? Darin Beckett? Gilly Clover? The mind reels.Summary:Aaron doesn’t die.Author’s Note: So I was reading “The Radio Game” by TheLastGoodGoldfish in which a fair bit of time is spent in Logan’s head before he finds out Aaron is out of his life for good. My brain proceeded to go places.  Also, I probably should have been including the definitions of the physics stuff from the start.





	Length Contraction

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Radio Game](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2904200) by [TheLastGoodGoldfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLastGoodGoldfish/pseuds/TheLastGoodGoldfish). 



[Length Contraction – The phenomenon, predicted by Albert Einstein’s Special and General Theories of Relativity, whereby, from the relative context of one observer’s frame of reference, space or length appears to decrease as the relative velocities increase.](https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/glossary.html)

Aaron doesn’t die. Despite the power of Logan’s hatred, it seems to Logan like he never will.

Finding Aaron sitting in the suite he’d shared with Duncan—because of course the hotel staff let him in; his name is on the checks— eviscerates what is left of his insides after the roof, after a night of Veronica’s grief for the only decent dad in Neptune (possibly the world if Logan’s travels are anything to go by), after seeing the sheriff alive with his own eyes.

At least there is that, a balance. Sure, the Antichrist has been found not guilty and is looking to reconnect with the son whose girlfriends he’s either murdered or tried to but so is Neptune’s version of Wally Cleaver. Two sides of a coin. Foils. God, their English teacher Mrs. White would have such a hard on.

None of that solves the problem though. Because Aaron means it—as much as he ever means anything—has moved his stuff into the suite, into Duncan’s room, and set up an appointment with realtors to find a new show case for what replacements of Aaron Echolls paraphernalia eBay has on offer—at least that damn fire was good for something.

Ditching is easy. He’s had enough practice after all.

There’s no books or homework to pack up, his board is stored downstairs for easy access—and it’s moments like this he wishes he’d been able to make himself talk to Dick; it’s too late now, Ex-Mrs. Big Dick has built a brick wall around him of PR muscle. There aren’t any long time mementos or art or anything that is really his except some clothes, his wetsuit, and some random crap that has accumulated since Duncan and he have been living there. He leaves most of it—okay, he takes the cardigan he’s sure is Veronica’s and a couple of the books she’d abandoned there in The Days of the Donut but the rest of the crap—half smoked pack of cigarettes long gone stale, receipts, rolling papers, someone named Steve Taylor’s driver’s license (under twenty-one so basically pointless). He can pretty much haul out all of the stuff worth taking in one bag— _Sorry Duncan but that argyle sweater is not worth the agony of having to work any harder at running out on Dear Olde Dad_ —and swing by to pick up his board. It’ll look like he’s going surfing.

Aaron will be none the wiser until he tries to tug on Logan’s leash.

Which leads him to the next problem.

He’s got nowhere to go and only so long before Aaron uses the Xterra against him. Because it is also actually in Aaron Echolls’ name. So wherever he’s going, he’s going to have to get there without Aaron’s money or help because then as a _goddamned_ adult there is not a fucking thing Aaron can do to him anymore. It’s not like Logan needs money for college because he never even applied— _Who says you can’t beat the system?_ —and this is something the people wanting to please him are finally good for. It might play hell with his patience—Hell _is_ other people—but that far outweighs sharing air with the Wrinkled and Insane.

He’s got a few weeks to months of couch surfing before his hangers-on realize the worm has turned or start to head off to college. It’ll also be hard without a car.

First though, he’s got to stash his board someplace where it’ll still be there when he actually wants it. And finally there is an easy answer besides _Run_ : His mother’s storage unit.

Anything that survived the fire is in that storage unit, packed away under his mother’s name for years. What little remains of his inheritance and some cash for a rainy day— _Man, oh man, is it starting to pour_ —is there. The investments would require time and a professional to move and most of them are royalties in films that were not so successful.

He rifles through things for a while, drops anything in his duffle he doesn’t want to haul from couch to couch and makes a mental list of what he might be able to sell for enough cash to get wheels of his own.

Which is another headache.

Normally he’d go through someone like Avi Kaufman but that will put him right back on his father’s radar—read: unacceptable—and selling to his friends means fast money and the chance to buy it back when he has real money again— _Who the fuck knows where that is going to come from?_ —is more likely. However, it’ll also take way more items to scrape together enough dough. The other option is to call his old pal and long-time Mars confidant Cliffy.

Cliff would know a couple of places to get a decent deal (even if he’d did ask Sheriff Mars for recommendations) and help him set things up so he wasn’t screwed later. It’s worth whatever blowback might come from that quarter to be well shot of his father now that the nihilistic shit is on the god-complex high of having literally gotten away with murder. He digs through things to find the appraiser’s report he tossed in a drawer somewhere while the estate was being settled—Aaron The Good Father had insisted it be done and the art insured which is the only reason he’s had as much money as he has since the house burned down and the pieces in it were paid out.

It’s not long to lock up and appear at Cliff’s desk and not much longer still before Cliff is wading in and parsing things out and even less time after that before one Veronica Mars waltzes in like Cliff has a neurological connection to her cerebral cortex. The man must be a stealth texter and for his generation that is pretty impressive.

“I’m gonna borrow him for just a sec,” she says to Cliff even as she is dragging him from the chair by his ear lobe and ignoring his complaints.

“Hey,” he cringes when she releases him in an empty hallway, “I can think of nothing I did to deserve that,” he returns pointing at her stern but mostly mocking.

He’s not expecting the hug he gets in return, the earnestness behind it that is almost at Pink Ronnie levels, or the exhaled, “Thank you,” that she says into his chest.

“You’re welcome?” he says like he doesn’t want her where she is and his arms come up around her.

“Don’t blow it now, Echolls. You’ve finally gotten off the shit list and I would hate for it to be a brief reprieve.”

“Well, we all know I’m not one for the good books. Permanent naughty list, that’s me.”

“Shut up and stand there for once.”

“Yes ma’am,” he complies as the tingles come back. Last night holding her felt painful, but now it is like it has always been, sweet and warm and the vague possibility of more.

“Hey,” she scolds and pushes him off her as the moment of peace— _Veronica Mars? Peaceful? Ha_ —shatters into their usual fare. “What was the big idea this morning, vanishing like that?”

He shrugs; what reason was there to stay? “You looked like you could use some private time.”

“Maybe a little, but you left your stuff and didn’t come back for it, and Dad was all ‘What was that young man,’“ Veronica continued in a typically terrible impression, “‘doing here at this hour of the morning?’ I’m pretty sure you blew your chance at ‘I slept on the couch, sir, and comforted your distressed child’ brownie points.” She even has a terrible voice for him; he really hopes it isn’t the way he sounds in her head.

“Come on, you and I both know I’d never say sir.”

She smiles up and him again and it feels like light years ago, like the whole horrible last year hadn’t happened and they’d only just started making out.

“Veronica,” he says and it sounds needy, even to his own not-needy-adverse ears. But it must not be too bad because her face goes soft and her eyes a little wide and her breathing shallows out. _Fuck._ It’s been a while, sure, but all signs point to Veronica-Mars-wants-to-kiss-him.

And it turns out she did, she does. They do. Without a whole lot of pushing and shoving he is crashing on Cliff’s terrible couch, ride sharing his old-rattles-mobile, and wishing Veronica a fond farewell at the airport security line. They spend a lot of her week in New York on the phone—he has to get a new one because the old one is tied to Aaron’s family plan (the list of shit just keeps growing)—and he regales her with tales of his hunt for under the table employment—he doesn’t want the first PI Aaron hires to be able to find him inside ten minutes.

It helps that he has a small army of people who want to keep him and Aaron separated. Logan does not want to know what Veronica said to the Sheriff to get him to the neutral place, the Let’s-keep-Logan-alive place, but he is glad to have him on side or at least not working to reunite the wayward family. Even the vague cessation of hostilities with Wallace has him suggesting the Sack-n-pack with minimal obvious glee—though Mac’s glaring absence from all things is pretty apparent.

After a while though, the only explanation for how he has gone so long without Aaron tracking him down is that Aaron isn’t looking. So far his Innocent-Man-Freed schtick is selling even without the full happy reunion photo—Trina is enough it would seem to suggest the idea. Perhaps a publicist convinced the camera hogs that people haven’t forgotten that Logan testified _against_ the Poor Maligned Star and that Logan’s once again girlfriend was painted with a pretty big scarlet letter S for skank throughout the trial.

Not that he’s complaining, oh no. As long as the media darling doesn’t throw anymore mud Veronica’s direction, Logan is happy to give surfing lessons to tourists, edit papers for high schoolers on the internet, and any other dogs body job he can get paid for that won’t cost him Veronica’s respect—he doesn’t have much self-respect and really she’s a better judge of character—or require his social security number.

This plan has flaws. Sustainability wise it sucks. He knows he can’t still be hiding in Neptune when he 64. The money from his mother’s art collection and investments isn’t amounting to much. It’ll be a million or two but not enough to live on in the style to which he is accustomed—the last several weeks on Cliff’s couch notwithstanding. He’s also going to wear out his welcome on the greater Mars doorstep pretty soon. A bigger plan needs to come into play. The bigger plan cannot be “Cling to his Girlfriend’s Coattails for the Rest of his Life” and so he goes to the library—yes, the _library_ ; Veronica has now rubbed off on him in numerous and varied ways—and starts working through the self-help section looking at titles like _Dream Job 101_ and _What’s_ Your _Line?_. It sucks and it makes him want to punch himself to have to read “Follow your bliss” over and over in slightly different fonts.

He’s in his eighth diatribe against an over-avoidance of passive voice ( _Conquer! Win! Discover!_ It’s a parade of verbs that even _School House Rock!_ did not feel like inflicting on the world) when Veronica starts yelling at him to stop grousing and do something about it.

“Write a manifesto or something Logan, because you convinced all of the people within twenty feet two weeks ago.” She pats him on the arm and walks away.

It’s her again who says to call Casey Gant: “You want to tell other people how to write less crap stuff; he actually has people who do that for a living.”

“I can’t just get a regular job, Veronica. You know I can’t.”

“Yes, I know. But talk to Casey. He gets shitty family.”

Logan looks at her like she can’t be serious—he’s a cynic even if he’s a _romantic_ cynic.

“I mean he _gets shitty family_. Trust me,” she says and kisses him on her way back to the espresso machine.

Because she isn’t wrong on either counts, Logan likes to mock people out of their own stupidity and Casey nods and gives Logan a wry, knowing grin when he says it needs to be off the books.

Hilariously, the best way to keep his income from being traced is to create a pen name and become an author.

It all kind of works out.

Kind of being the operative phrase.

Logan lives in cheap, terrible apartments where no one does credit checks and just assumes he’s earning money as an Echolls lookalike—and hey, if there is money in that, Logan is game. He writes murder mysteries and can admit that the first couple are…a little too true to life. Your average reader isn’t going to pick it up and go, “Whoa, an Echolls totally wrote this shit about Lilly Kane.” But they are going to know the author followed the Lilly Kane murder pretty closely. Somebody who followed the cases Logan was involved in would see Felix Tombs and the Hearst Rapists too but there is only a small handful of people who did and most of them help him fact check things like bug and tracker specs.

He and Veronica hit the skids a couple times. It’s not Donut Part Deux but it gets bad a time or two when they both get a little too into character—Veronica as Sam Spade and Logan as Brigid O’Shaughnessy. But if there is one thing Logan has come to realize is that she is _actually_ a sap for the puppy dog eyes. He can use them for baked goods or he can trot them out when her righteous fury has cooled off just enough to have truly great make-up sex—and the make-up sex (or really the sex in general) is moment-of-silence worthy so _a moment of silence, please_. The judicious application of mope face has gotten them through some pretty shitty moments (including the first major one which, in the grand scheme of things, was a stumbling block). Luckily, it happens less and less to get her to speak to him again and more and more to get her to ply him with sweets—What? He surfs twice a day; his waist line is fine.

In the end it is his own fault. He stupidly thinks: _Life’s good. Fuck him. He can’t touch me._ So of course Aaron shows up asking Logan to sign one of his books (not one of the ones about Lilly because it turns out Logan _can_ grow as a person). Things, predictably, go south pretty fast.

And God it feels so good, _so good_ for his fist to finally connect with that smug, manicured face.

All the rage Logan had yet to process through pop novels about the messier parts of living even beautiful people have to endure pours out of him and— _damnit_ —Veronica is the one that has to come between them. _Veronica_ has to fucking _defend_ Aaron— _God, the world is shitty_. So of course Aaron files an assault charge and Logan laughs himself sick. _Literally._

So of course Veronica, worried and vengeful, finds a good deal of medical evidence that Aaron beat both him and Lynn and—rather than blackmail the fucker with it—gets a restraining order and then _leaks it to the tabs_.

_God, he loves her._

Even though it sucks for a while—the paps are up their asses until Tom Cruise’s true weirdness drips out in public again—life is still pretty good. Logan and Veronica have their apartment, they have their dog, their jobs, their friends, their family and her face still goes soft, her eyes widen, and her breath gets shallow and he kisses her _and kisses her_. And Aaron can live a million _fucking_ years and still not take that away.

**Author's Note:**

> When I started pondering this piece I thought it would get way more angst-ridden. Classic deflection saved the day.


End file.
